To Fight Again
by Egas Bladesoul
Summary: Harry finally defeats Voldemort, but everyone else is dead. Harry gets a chance to do it all over, and chooses to take it. Cliche time travel fic, powerful, smart Harry. T for violence
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not, and will never, own Harry Potter, the places, or characters related. Furthermore, any places and ideas that come from other literary works are not mine, as I am not currently a renowned author. Speculation on magical theory and certain cause and effect simulations are probably mine though, as JK never really discussed any of it.

"RIDDLE," bellowed a young man in his twenties with wild black hair, piercing emerald eyes, bloodstained clothes, and a lightning bolt scar upon his forehead that bled black.

"Poor baby Potter," a middle-aged woman with greying frizzled black hair taunted in a mocking voice. "All his fwiends are dead. What ever will he do now?"

Mr. Potter did not answer her, and for a split second, he relived what had just happened. He and Hermione, the last living members of the Order of the Pheonix had carefully planned their final assault on the Dark Lord's fortress, that had once been Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but it didn't survive neither Murphy's Law nor First Contact. In a change from their normal strategy, the Death Eaters fought him while Tom had mercilessly slaughtered his last friend. The snake-faced wanker then walked back into his throne room to wait for his minions to drag Potter to him, but in Harry's rage, they all fell. Harry held Hermione as she bled out through numerous wounds, as Riddle had been too cruel to allow her the relatively quick and painless death of the Avada Kedavra. Instead, he fired multiple piercing hexes at her, and while the only lethal blow had been the one that pierced her stomach, it was beyond Harry's capacity to heal.

Ron had died months before, jumping in front of a killing curse that would have killed his longtime girlfriend. Neville, Ginny and Luna, along with countless others died at the Battle of Hogwarts, in which the Golden Trio barely escaped with their lives. The grounds had since been desecrated, the only thing remaining untouched was the tomb of Albus Dumbledore, which was protected by ancient magic beyond any of their understanding. At least the Death Eater's victory that night had been pyrrhic, with at least five of the Dark Lord's minions dead per Defender of Hogwarts. Fawkes had had a battle of epic proportions with Voldemort's fledgling basilisk that had ended both their lives, permanently.

Instead of rising to her taunts, Harry raised his wand at her in a fist with whitened knuckles. She died laughing, just like the cousin she murdered. Harry felt no remorse as he summoned her black heart, no pun intended, straight from her chest. With the reflexes trained first as a Quidditch seeker and later as a soldier, he caught the organ with his free hand, and crushed it. That was the last thing Bellatrix Lestrange had ever seen, and even though she never stopped laughing, her eyes showed the horror as it happened.

"Potter," Voldemort answered, determined not to let the brutal death of his right hand bother him.

"We finish this tonight," Harry stated, and the Dark Lord nodded, drawing his wand.

"You know this won't end any differently than any of the other countless duels we've had?" the Dark Lord quipped.

Harry smirked and pulled something from his sleeve. "Recognize this?" he asked coldly.

"Dumbledore's wand won't help you, just as Lucius' didn't help me."

"Ah, but this is no ordinary wand," Harry said, his eyes glowing ever so slightly with magical power. "Now that the segment of your soul that had been siphoning my magic is destroyed, we are on equal footing, but this is the fabled Elder wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, the unbeatable wand," Harry almost gloated. If it were possible, the color would have drained from Voldemort's face. "When we paid our respects to the headmaster, his tomb broke open and his skeletal hand presented it to me, to use to defeat you." Voldemort stood, proud until the end, and drew his wand, preparing for the duel to come. He stared as Harry grabbed the Elder wand with both hands and snapped it. The surrounding magical discharge made the world go white for both of them, and as it grew less intense, they found themselves on opposite sides of a stone circle.

"What have you done, boy?" Riddle cried in outrage. "You have just destroyed the most powerful weapon known to wizardkind, without any idea of what may have happened."

"I will not destroy you with an unbeatable wand, it would mean nothing," Harry replied, his voice cold and emotionless. "This was one of the conclusions I had come to. We are outside the veil, the other side of the looking glass that is Stonehenge. Here, as the last of the Peverell blood, we can fight with our own wands, without any interruptions. Once again, the Lord Slytherin battles the Lord Griffindor for the fate of the known world," Harry ranted rather maniacally. "Now then," he readied himself. "First, we bow," he waited for Voldemort to mimic him. "and now, we fight."

Like that fight ever so long ago in the graveyard, Riddle opened with the cruciatus curse, which Harry deflected with a flick of his wand before sending a cutting curse at the dark lord, who conjured a shield that blocked the brunt of the curse, but a small portion nicked his ear, and his blood ran, the dark red painfully bright on the abnormally pale skin. He retaliated with a blast of fiendfyre which would have disinegrated a lesser opponent. With another flick of his wand the hellish creatures turned to ash and began to fall as Harry conjured a wind to blow the hot ash back on Voldemort. Struggling to keep his balance, the dark lord tranfigured the ash into an army of poisonous snakes before siccing them on the chosen one. A blasting curse shook the ground beneath their feet and distroyed the snakes.

Voldemort followed up the snakes with a whipping motion, and dark purple flames whipped out of his wand at his nemesis, who made his own slashing moment bisecting the attack and sending it harmlessly to the side. Harry returned to the offensive with scalding hex, which Voldemort countered with a bloodfreezing hex that cancelled it out. "ENOUGH," Voldemort roared. "No more games, Hary Potter."

"I'm just getting started," Harry retorted, sending off a volley of spells. Voldemort struggled to block them, and the last broke through, sending the dark lord's wand spinning into the white oblivion surrounding the stones. "YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME! My mother and father, simply because I was their child. Sirius and Remus and Tonks, Moody, Dumbledore, Shacklebolt. Professor McGonagall. You didn't hesitate to kill any of them. You killed Snape, thinking that the wand was his, but I had already beaten him and learned the truth. But I wasn't strong enough, even with the wand to face you, not then, not yet. You took the darkest path, your dark rituals magnifying your already prodigious strength. But I learned something, something that truly ties us together Tom, unlike that old fraud's "prophecy". Did you know that she only told that to Dumbledore so she would get hired? I guess not, seeing as when we found her she was on a rack, barely alive and begging for death. It was in Godric's Hollow that we found the first clue. The village is there because of the Potter family, just as Little Haggleton was there because of the Gaunt family."

Voldemort's eyes widened. "Surely you don't mean?"

"Ah, so you did know what that ring symbolized. Yes, we are the descendants of two of the three brothers. You from Cadmus Peverell, of the Stone, and me from Ignotus Peverell, of the cloak. You from Slytherin, and I from Griffindor. And now, I'll erase the stain from the Peverell family history that was the twisted Gaunt family. But first, do you know why your father left your mother? It was not, as Albus Dumbledore had speculated, that he was disgusted by the fact that she was a witch and had forced him to love her, but of the secret shame of the Riddles. For the same reason that Marvolo did not kill Merope, your ancestors did not kill their squib children. How could they spill the noble blood of Salazar Slytherin, even if the magic only ran dormant within their veins. Your father was disgusted by the incestuous nature of your conception, for his own mother was Marvolo's squib sister," Harry monologued half-insane.

"Please, have mercy," Voldemort begged, realizing the futility of his situation, wandless before a greater opponent, leaving him with mere parlor tricks.

"Did you have mercy on poor Hermione, whose skin decorated your throne, back in the real world. Or on Ginny Weasley, my pureblood love, who I comforted as she died after the Battle of Hogwarts, raped, tortured, and left in the cold snowy ruins of Hogwarts?" Harry punctuated each with a curse. First a piercing hex to the gut, where he knew there was nothing that would cause a fatal injury, then a incising curse that tore the well aged dark lord's arm off. "I have no mercy for you, I pitied you, I understood you. We had similar childhoods, shunned, because of what we were capable of. Feared, because of our magic. But now, I feel nothing, with her death, I have nothing else, except for this. Avada Kedavra," he finished, the green blast pushing the older man into one of the stones, before he slumped down dead. "At last, its over," he said to the corpse.

"No, its only the beginning," a woman said from behind one of the ancient monoliths. "You, Harry, have a choice. With the end of Voldemort, here, in this place, you can choose. Forward, to a new day, and help the world rebuild."

"Or you can go back, and fix the damage that this one man made possible," a man said, stepping out from behind another.

"Whatever you wanted the world to be, it would," she continued. "Even if you choose to go back, everyone will know you name, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, the Chosen One, the Savior, Harry Darkslayer, Champion of the Light. Albus Dumbledore will pale in comparison to you. You'll truly be the next Merlin, remembered for generations."

"But you will have to do it alone," the man countered. "War changes people, and though you would be great, no one would truly understand their champion. Going back is a chance for new life, to save the fallen."

"Only forward can give new life, new chances, there will always be others. Looking back is to embrace death," she argued.

"Those who are unwilling to embrace death will be condemned to make the same mistakes as the past. Embracing death allows for new life to prosper. When the forest burns, new life can bloom when the fire dies."

"Exactly, the fire has burned, so let new life grow, instead of clinging to what was."

"The ground of the proper timeline has been burned and salted. Nothing can grow there."

"ENOUGH," Harry roared, allowing his magic to ripple outwards from him. They turned immediately to him, silenced. "There is nothing left for me. Ginny's dead, the Weasley clan no more, Hermione was butchered, Luna lost to the lunacy of our world, Neville never backed down, not even to Riddle himself, despite being outclassed. Everyone is dead. Hogwarts is in ruins, the ancient magics that made her unique dispersed to the four winds, Europe is in anarchy, with much of the rest of the world in a state of civil war. I feel that in this world, wizardkind faces its twilight. The day of witches and wizards, magical beasts and wonders has come to an end. So let the muggles have their day, let them their chance to rule truly independent of our world, free from the unknown and hidden terrors of things that they can no longer comprehend," Harry explained his thoughts.

They nodded. "Its settled then?" they asked each other, who nodded. "You show a wisdom beyond your years, aged by the tragedy of war," the woman cried for him.

"You will not remember everything. The toll must be paid, but you will have your power, your finely honed reflexes, and knowledge of magic," the man stated.

"And it will hurt. You will become what you once were. Innocence will be restored, for Mother would never stand for an abomination such as a child without innocence. Despite your lacking life, you had it, until that night in that graveyard. Were you allowed to keep your memories, then you would be damned to become like him, twisted by the power that is the only thing you have, and there would be a new Dark Lord, one unlike anything the world has ever seen," she continued.

"I accept," Harry said, unfazed. "To see any of them again, would be a gift beyond measure."

"Fool boy," the woman chided. "You are meddling with forces you cannot possibly comprehend."

"When you are ready, touch your wand to each stone, and then put the two halves of the elder wand together. It will take but a moment, and we will try to distract you from the pain for as long as possible," the man said.

Harry did just that, and then it began. It began in his toes, and felt as though someone decided to boil his blood inside his veins, but wouldn't allow him to die. He bit back a scream, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. "What is this place?" he asked, knowing that Hermione would never forgive him if he didn't ask.

They grinned at him. "This, Harry, dear, is what lies beyond the looking glass that is Stonehenge. Merlin built it and powered it upon a ley line, so that he could speak to the parents he never knew as a boy. He never used it for that purpose, deciding that it was better not to know, that to regret the decision."

"How did we get here?"

"The Elder Wand was made for the purpose of activating the circle. Merlin knew that he could not handle that sort of power, and the only person he ever met who was was the youngest Peverell, but he didn't want it. When you broke it, the magic he invested in it was released, and it brought you here."

The burning was almost all encompassing, but Harry managed to ask one more question. "Who are you?"

"That's the million galleon question, isn't it?"

AN: Lots of ideas running through my head right now, just wanna get some written out.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: If you think I own Harry Potter and its affiliated things, methinks you need to get professional help. J.K. Rowling is its rightful owner.

As the sun rose on an average home in an average neighborhood of Little Whinging in Surrey, a boy began thrashing violently in his sleep. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, he was in no danger of rolling off of his bed, as he slept in the closet under the stairs. It was not a lack of space or the comfort of the cupboard that he was there, but the cruelty of his aunt and uncle, who had the unfortunate task, or so they claimed, of raising him. Luckily however, it was one of the seldom times that he had not thoroughly enraged his uncle, and therefore the padlock the normally kept him sealed within the tiny cupboard was not locked.

After a few moments, the boy sat up rather quickly, reaching for something that wasn't there. He winced at a phantom pain that burned within him, and then decided to get a drink. Realizing that his uncle would soon wake up to begin getting ready for work, he also began making breakfast. Finishing his glass of water, he set about making the Dursley's favorite foods, turned the coffee maker on for his uncle's coffee, and the kettle on for his aunt's tea. He set about making pancake batter for his cousin, who would throw a tantrum if he didn't have something sweet at every meal, and then six other times a day as well. He frowned, it seems that Dudley, his beachball of a cousin had tried eating the bag of sugar again, as his aunt had placed it on the top shelf, well out of his reach, even with a chair.

Suddenly, it began to float, right down to his outreached hand. His eyes widened, and a rare grin spread across his face. He left the cabinet open, and went back to the task at hand. He poured the flour in, and then, focusing as hard as he could, pulled the next ingredient out of the cupboard, made it pour itself, and then put it back. He then pulled out the whisk and set it about its task as he pulled out over half a dozen eggs and over a pound of bacon, butter and the bread.

The boy's uncle walked into the kitchen right as the eggs cracked themselves into a hot and buttered frying pan and dropped the newspaper he was carrying. He became very pale, and managed to shriek, "P-p-petunia," at the top of his lungs. Said woman bounded down into the kitchen wrapped in a bathing robe and shrieked. Gathering every ounce of courage in his body, the boy's uncle went to punch the boy in the stomach to make him stop. Distracted though he was, the boy noticed his uncle's attack, and stepped to the side. His uncle, being overweight and of poor balance, fell, breaking a chair on his way down.

Enraged, he stood back up, and went to hit the boy again. The boy, however, was distracted by a voice in his head telling him to hurt his aunt and uncle, to make them suffer, as they had made him suffer. The voice made the scar on his forehead burn as though the cut was fresh and someone had poured salt and lemon juice into it. He didn't notice his uncle's fist until it collided with his face, snapping his glasses in half and sending him to the floor. His uncle picked him up by his neck and threw him in his closet, locking him in. He didn't notice however, as he quickly succumbed to the pain from his scar and blacked out.

* * *

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The boy came to in a familiar place, though from where he recognized it, he couldn't remember. He sat up to find himself on a couch, sitting in between a man with black hair like his and glasses, and a redhaired woman with eyes like his. "Mum, dad?" he asked, but they didn't seem to hear him. There was a large crack outside, and the man went to the window to peer outside. Harry followed him, and saw a man in a black cloak walking up the path to the house.

The man paled. "Lily, its Him, take Harry and run, I'll try to hold him off," he shouted as the door exploded inward. He raised his wand, but the lethal blast of green light was already upon him.

"James," the woman screamed, grabbing the boy and running up the stairs. She set the baby she, was cradling to her chest in his crib and turned to face the man at who had just entered the room.

"Step aside, girl, I only want the boy." He said. She pleaded with him, but to no avail. "I said step aside, woman." When she refused the another blast of the same green light took her life as it did her husband's. The baby, who had been crying fiercely, stopped, glaring at evil man who had just taken the lives of his mother and father. Harry reacted as the man shot a third blast of light from his wand at the baby, jumping in between them in an attempt to shield the baby from the horrible fate that awaited it, but the curse passed right through him, twice. Once as it flew towards the poor child, and once as it reflected back at the caster. With a scream of inhuman agony, the man was gone, exploding into dust and destroying the part of the house behind him.

There was a flash of white light, and then the baby was gone. The older Harry glanced around, to find a boy his age standing upon the ruined black robes. He was inhumanly pale, with black eyes and only slits for nostrils. Strangely, he had the same scar Harry did, the irritated red flesh showing clearly. The boy seemed completely wrong, as though his very existence was a blight upon reality. The boy smiled viciously at him. "We meet again, Harry Potter. To think, I slept inside you these nine long years. But where are my manners? I, am Lord Voldemort, the most powerful sorceror in the world. I am even greater than the Great Albus Dumbledore." the dark lord said in a hilariously high pitched voice.

"Thats a silly name," Harry said bluntly. "I mean, you must've really been made fun of as a kid, with a name like that."

"No its not, its a wicked name," the boy replied.

"Is not."

"Is too."

"Keep telling yourself that," Harry dismissed him cooly. "Where are we?"

"I will, thank you very much," the boy snapped coldly. "This is, or was, the memory of the day that I tried to kill you."

"That wasn't very nice of you," Harry scolded him.

"I'm not a very nice person, see." The evil child made a rabbit appear and then snapped its neck.

"Thats terrible, why would you do something like that? How did you do that?" Harry asked.

"Well, first I grabbed it firmly at the head and back, and then I twisted really hard," he said, matter-of-factly.

"Not that you twit," Harry retorted.

"Ah, well, when your a wizard you can do all sorts of things, like your little display in the kitchen," Voldemort answered.

"Well, I guess I'm a better magician than you are, I mean, plenty of people can pull rabbits out of their hats. I made things fly around the kitchen," Harry speculated.

Voldemort's slits flared. "How dare you claim to be greater than the great Lord Voldemort!" he yelled.

"Your worse than my cousin," Harry muttered.

"HOW DARE YOU COMPARE ME TO THAT MUGGLE FILTH," he screamed. "I will not tolerate your insolence." The snakelike boy charged Harry, who despite being abnormally small for his age was bigger than the other boy, and had much better reflexes from "playing" with Dudley and his friends. He sidestepped and tripped the other boy. Harry twisted the other boy's arm behind his back to keep him from attacking.

Unwilling to be defeated so easily, Voldemort switched tactics. He pushed Harry off with a wave of magical energy, and then stared into his eyes. Harry's scar burned as the sneak attacked his mind. Harry quickly counterattacked with his own mental assault, following it up with a physical one. Despite his attempts to push the dark lordling out of his mind, he got flashes of what the other boy planned. Voldemort planned on taking over his body here as they battled in Harry's mind, and using it as his own, he planned to once again attempt to destroy the magical world and an old man with a really long beard. Harry realized that he couldn't allow the boy to win as his fist collided with the other boy's cheek, splitting the lip and sending him sprawling. The physical attack did its purpose and broke the mental link between them. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD," Harry roared at the boy, and began to push him out. The boy screamed in otherworldly agony as he began to get torn open at the forehead. Harry pushed harder and harder, and the tear grew, light pouring out.

"NOOOOOooooo," the boy shrieked as he dispersed into dust as the older version of him had done so earlier. Harry panted, but felt relieved that it was gone, like he could focus like never before in his life. He felt lighter, no longer having the evil soul tainting his own. Exhausted from the exertion of physical, mental, and magical force, Harry returned to the couch from which he had woken on and allowed himself to pass out.

A/N: I realize this is kind of short, but I didn't want to go any farther with this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the lovely mysterious couple from the first chapter, who I don't even know who are.

Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore had been having a perfectly lovely day. He convinced Arabella Figg that how harsh his aunt and uncle were would be good for Harry and picked up his monthly supply of lemon drops. And then after lunch he had put down one of Lucius' Malfoy's pet bills that he was trying to force through the Wizengamot via his bribes to Minister Fudge. And finally he had managed to get Minerva to lay off Severus, again, or at least until he did something she considered unfair to one of the students, and then she'd begin her vicious tirade all over again.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and shortly after Minerva had left his office, one of the many devices that either spun, spat various bits of colored smoke, or oscillated began to make a rather unusual whirring. Dumbledore grimaced, noting that the particular device monitored Harry's magic, speeding up when he used magic and as his magical core grew. Had Dumbledore been in his office earlier, he may have noticed that it had been at an alarming rate for a boy a few months under eleven. Alarmed, he made a portkey to Privet Drive. Appearing in front of Number Four, he immediately covered his ears. Harry was discharging such a large quantity of magic that all the glass in the house was reverberating like a muggle stereo with the bass turned all the way up. With a flick of his wand he cast a silencing charm around the property to keep the muggles from gathering before knocking on the door.

"You," Petunia shrieked, dropping the glass she had been holding, which shattered on the doorstep.

"Good evening, Petunia," he greeted her cordially, pushing his way into the house. "My, what a lovely home you have."

_"VERNON,"_ she screamed. Said man descended down the stairs like a thunderstorm amidst the nigh unbearable rattling of glass. With a flick of his wand, the windows stopped rattling, and Vernon Dursley began his wonderful imitation of a metamorphmagi. First he went pale, then red, then violet, and began nearing something almost black.

"YOUR KIND. ARE NOT. WELCOME. IN THIS HOUSE," Vernon roared. He opened his mouth to say something else, but no words came out, instead, his tongue seemed to have turned into a curly party favor that made a rather irritating noise when blown.

"As it were, Mr. Dursley, I have come to see Mr. Potter, and the sooner I have, the sooner I'll be off," Dumbledore replied rather coldly, ignoring the grating sound that was all Vernon Dursley could produce.

"He, he's not here right now," Petunia stammered. "He is out playing with his-his friends."

"Ah, but if only that were true," Albus said sadly. "The windows protest otherwise, and I happen to know that children are terrified of being seen as young Harry's friends. Now, where might I find him?" he asked politely.

Petunia stammered something unintelligent, when the door to the closet under the stairs was blasted off its hinges. The boy in question stumbled out. "Somebody looking for me?" he said rather tiredly, a dark, almost black fluid trickling from his scar. "Pardon me, but who are you?"

"Ah, Harry my boy. I am Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Ooh. Voldemort was just talking about you. I'm Harry Potter, but you knew that, didn't you?" Harry said. Dumbledore looked as though he had been poleaxed with a lead pipe.

"You said V-Voldemort was telling you about me?" he asked, panicking.

"Nah, just how he was better than you, and then we argued about his name, got in a fight," Harry droned, before his eyes snapped open. "Oh my god, I killed him. I killed a person. They're gonna lock me up," he started repeating.

Dumbledore grabbed the boy to calm him down. "Relax, Voldemort, or Tom, as his mother called him, has been dead for almost ten years now," he placated the boy. "You couldn't possibly have murdered a dead man, now could you?" When Harry finally calmed down, he began again. "How about we go to my office so we can talk without disturbing your aunt and uncle?" When Harry nodded, Dumbledore instructed the boy to grab a lawn gnome that he had turned into a portkey and whisked Harry away from the Dursleys.

Harry would have emptied his stomach on Dumbledore's desk, however not having anything in it made it so he couldn't do more than dry heave. Dumbledore poured the boy a glass of water. He took it, thanking the old man. "Now then, Harry," Dumbledore began. "I am a wizard, and this is Hogwarts, specifically my office, do you understand?"

"You don't feel it necessary to pull a rabbit out of your hat an snap its neck to demonstrate, do you?" Harry asked cheekily. Dumbledore stared at the boy confused.

"That's how he demonstrated," he mumbled, earning a chuckle from the ancient man.

"Yes, he would demontrate it like that. While gruesome as it was, it does make my job of explaining slightly easier. Now I would like to ask a favor of you." He stood up and brought a stone basin out of a cabinet and placed it on the desk in between them. "This is called a pensieve, Harry. It allows me to see memories again from a slightly different perspective." He demonstrated, putting his wand up to his temple and pulling a silvery strand away. He dropped it into the bowl, and the image of Lily and James Potter's sorting played. "Now I want you to show me what happened between you and Tom, alright?" Nodding his understanding, Harry promptly picked up the wand and placed it on his temple, pulling his own silvery thread out and adding it to the bowl. Dumbledore took the offered wand back and stuck it in the silvery mass on the bowl and was seemingly pulled in. Harry was surprised to find that it didn't shock him at all.

About five minutes later Dumbledore returned from his voyage into Harry's memory, with a big grin on his face. "Greater sorceror indeed," Dumbledore laughed. "Lily, and especially James would have been proud."

"Professor?" Harry asked timidly. "Do I have to go back to the Dursleys?"

"I'm afraid that for now it is for the best, I'm afraid. But don't worry, next year you'll start at Hogwarts."

"What about my school supplies, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon will never take me to get them?" Harry pondered.

"Hmm, perhaps it would be best for you to get them now, then," Dumbledore agreed. "Fawkes, would you be so kind as to go get Hagrid for me?" he asked the large bird that had taken to perching on Harry's shoulder. It trilled and flew out the window, returning a few minutes later with the large man in tow.

"Evening, Headmaster," Hagrid called merrily, slightly tipsy from whatever he had been drinking. "What can I do you for?" He had yet to have noticed Harry sitting in front of the headmaster.

"Excuse me sir, but what are you?" Harry asked inquisitively. "Your not like normal people." Hagrid was taken back by the statement, for the first time noticing the scrawny, messy child in the headmaster's chambers. Harry blushed, ashamed of what he had said and quickly apologized. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you, I only meant that your magic was different than anyone else I've seen."

"Hagrid, I was wondering if you would be willing to take young Harry here to buy his school supplies tomorrow, but if you would prefer, I could always ask Minerva to do it," Dumbledore explained why he had called the gameskeeper.

"I'd be glad to, Headmaster," Hagrid replied proudly. "And don't worry, I'm used to the strange looks, Harry. Yeh have to be, when your as big as me." With that, Hagrid bid the headmaster good night and returned down to his hut, happily singing.

"You can see magic, my boy?" Dumbledore asked.

' "Only since this morning, sir," Harry explained. "I've been able to do lots of stuff since I woke up this morning."

"Intriguing," the Headmaster thought on this discovery. "Well, I'm afraid its awfully late, and you do have a rather long day tomorrow, so I must insist that you turn in for the night." He led Harry to one of the guest quarters for the night, not wanting to put him with the other children due to their reactions until Harry had a chance to expect and understand their attitudes. Harry crawled into the large bed and bid the headmaster good night as the old man left the room.


End file.
